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Mean Fields: Jonathan Miller: Into battle for cheap flights

A correspondent wishes me kidney cancer (he is very specific) for my temerity in attacking railways. The trouble with his faith in Victorian railway technology is that all the evidence proves trains a poor and costly way of moving people, compared with buses or planes.

This will remain true despite curses from trainspotters or interventions from the European Union.

I am not writing off Ryanair, despite the threat by Brussels to ban its concessionary landing arrangements. Any company mean enough to charge passengers for providing a wheelchair has got the killer instinct to survive.

I cannot see why the subsidies to Ryanair are so evil, compared with the subsidies collected by Air France, but Europe moves mysteriously. We will now hear a chorus of bleats from second-home owners in France, and I sympathise, being one of them. But I doubt Ryanair will be finished off by this plan. I am